what's the actual first sentence of your gallery email
i'll go first and expose myself: mine is some variation of "hi, i'm teddy, i paint, here's a link" and then i rewrite it four times and send the worst version.
but the real question is the opening line. do you lead with the work, the compliment, the "i saw your show in march," the attached PDF in the first paragraph, or the cursed "i hope this email finds you well."
i'm convinced the first line decides everything and i have zero evidence. tell me yours, and tell me if it actually worked.
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Mine is short and unglamorous: "I am writing to ask whether you would consider my botanical work for [gallery]." That is it. No compliment, no preamble. I was told once by a gallery director that she reads the first line only to decide whether the sender knows what they are asking for, and the answer to that question tells her more than any amount of flattery.
What actually worked, in my experience, was not the opening line but the first sentence of the second paragraph, where I named a specific show of theirs I had seen and one particular thing in it. If that sentence could have been written by anyone who had glanced at their website, it was not worth the ink. I have had two acceptances and a great many silences, and the silences never came from a bad first line so much as from a second paragraph that said nothing.
Also, a PDF in the first paragraph is a mistake. Send the images they can see at a glance and let the PDF be the thing they open when they are already interested.